Run Cisco Webex on 64-bit Ubuntu 17.04

1. Reference info

All credits go to mshkrebtan, this information is almost a copy (with minor fixes) from:

https://gist.github.com/mshkrebtan/407786e334847544b40e7d6a8a53d247

2. Install

a)Enable support for 32-bit executables

Add the i386 architecture to the list of dpkg architectures :

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386

Install the libraries required to execute ELF-32 executables:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install libc6:i386 libncurses5:i386 libstdc++6:i386

b)Install Firefox 52 ESR (32-bit)

Beginning with Firefox 52 (released March 2017), plug-in support is limited to Adobe Flash, and drops support for NPAPI, impacting plugins for Java, Silverlight, and other similar NPAPI based plugins. Hence you need the ESR release. You can read more on that here: https://www.java.com/en/download/help/firefox_java.xml

Download Firefox ESR for Linux (32-bit) from https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all/

Unpack it to somewhere, for example to /opt/webex/:

sudo mkdir -p /opt/webex/

sudo tar -xjvf firefox*esr*.tar.bz2 -C /opt/webex/

Install the libraries required for Firefox (i386) to run smoothly:

sudo apt-get install \

libgtk-3-0:i386 \

libasound2:i386 \

libdbus-glib-1-2:i386 \

libxt6:i386 \

libxtst6:i386 \

libcanberra-gtk-module:i386 \

libcanberra-gtk3-module:i386 \

topmenu-gtk3:i386

c) Install 32-bit JRE

Download Oracle JRE for Linux (a tar.gz archive for x86 architecture) from: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jre8-downloads-2133155.html

Unpack it to /opt/webex/:

sudo tar -xzvf jre*linux-i586.tar.gz -C /opt/webex/

sudo mv /opt/webex/jre* /opt/webex/jre

d)Enable Java support in Firefox

Create symbolic links for the Java browser plugin libraries:

sudo mkdir /opt/webex/firefox/plugins/

sudo ln -s \

/opt/webex/jre/lib/i386/libawt.so \

/opt/webex/jre/lib/i386/libjawt.so \

/opt/webex/jre/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so \

/opt/webex/firefox/plugins

e)Install the libraries required for Webex to run

sudo apt-get install \

libpangoxft-1.0-0:i386 \

libxft2:i386 \

libpangox-1.0-0:i386 \

libxmu6:i386 \

libxv1:i386 \

libasound2-plugins:i386

f)Create a Firefox launch script

cat << 'EOF' | sudo tee /opt/webex/firefox.sh

#!/bin/bash

export ENV_HOME=/opt/webex

export FIREFOX_HOME=$ENV_HOME/firefox

export MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH=$ENV_HOME/firefox/plugins

export JAVA_HOME=$ENV_HOME/jre

export PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH

#export JPI_PLUGIN2_DEBUG=1

$FIREFOX_HOME/firefox --no-remote -P

EOF

This script will start a new instance of Firefox with the ProfileManager. Choose an existing Firefox profile or create a new one.

You might want to specify a specific profile to start with. Just add the profile name after the -P flag.

Don't forget to make the script executable:

sudo chmod a+x /opt/webex/firefox.sh

3. Configure

You might want to create a symlink, like this:

sudo ln -s /opt/webex/firefox.sh /usr/local/bin/firefox-i386

4. Connect

4.a) Start a Webex session

Launch the script and join a Webex session [https://www.webex.com/test-meeting.html]:

$ firefox-i386

If webex.com sends you a jnlp file and Firefox asks what to do with it, just download it. Further, in the Firefox Preferences > Applications, set the action for JNLP files: they should be opened with javaws (Java Web Start) which can be found here:

/opt/webex/jre/bin/javaws

4.b) (Optional) Install the missing libraries required by Webex

Find out what required libraries are be missing (note that the session number may be different):

ldd ~/.webex/T32_UMC/*.so | grep "not found"

You can use http://packages.ubuntu.com/ to find out which packages contain the libraries.

It is OK to have libjawt.so being not found.